Latifah's kind of weird in general about being in/out. last year she exec produced a show, Single Ladies, in which she has a recurring guest role as a lesbian who claimed to have been involved w/ one of the main characters.

i wasn't saying that. i was just saying that, given the rampant speculation, her choosing to cast herself in that role was noteworthy. when i saw it i actually thought 'oh i guess she did finally come out of the closet and i must've missed it in the news' so morbs noting the pride day thing was the first recent acknowledgement i'd seen that she's not officially out. as a straight guy, i'm not going to lecture or judge gay people on the evils of speculating on the sexual orientation of celebrities, that seems like a popular pasttime and it's not really my place to say whether that's a bad thing.

yeah, it just propagates a homophobic environment, drawing lines between US/THEM by setting up the notion that only people of certain sexualities take up a certain job/role/creative endeavor, those just shouldn't be factors at all; yeah the gossip angle is a popular pasttime but it's a terrible one. but i think the same of spectator sports so w/e

lezbihonest tho, couldn't it just as well be argued that refusing to recognize signs of someone's sexuality unless they've explicitly acknowledged it is equally homophobic? (says guy who is continually frustrated that no one seems to recognize i'm gay even tho i make no effort to hide it)

Yeah, I'm with Rev on this one. My issue with the ENTIRE paradigm of how we talk about this stuff is that it's based on the underlying assumption that people are straight by default and we must treat them as such until they explicitly acknowledge that they're queer.

Generally in person, I'm not down for labelling anyone's sexuality as gay, straight, bi, pan, a, or other unless they identify themselves as such, but something sits wrong with me about the default = straight, even if it's statistically more likely to be an accurate assumption.

I mean, my two options are this: either I can pick up on the signals people are sending out in terms of not only self-presentation but implied statements, comments, *vibe*, and so forth.Or I can default assume everyone is queer until proven otherwise, which in some contexts, I do. Does that mean I'll be wrong sometimes? Sure.

But while I understand that "it's pretty sad/offensive that anyone period performing at a pride event immediately has to have their sexuality brought up" is a valid statement in the sense that plenty of non-queer people can be and are supportive of the LGBT communities, I also feel like the idea that it's "offensive" requires an assumption that it's "offensive" for a straight person to have to deal with speculation that they're gay, when very few people would ever say that it's "offensive" for someone to speculate/assume that I or Rev or any other queer person is straight before being told otherwise.

But on the other hand, speculating that people are queer based on stereotypical aspects of who they are just reinforces notions about what constitutes appropriate presentation/performance of gender and straightness or queer-ness, so this entire thing is pretty much a big mess, I suppose.

I think it's a lot easier to deal with this stuff on a personal/interpersonal level than a media/celebrity level and I suppose faux's right that the issue is that people are interested in gossip and celebrity's sex lives in ways that aren't relevant in the same way that kind of knowledge is in the context of friendships, sexual relationships, etc., but given that this sort of prurient interest isn't disappearing, we need to have a better way to discuss queerness and celebrity than 'straight until they hold a press conference or appear on the cover of People'

lezbihonest tho, couldn't it just as well be argued that refusing to recognize signs of someone's sexuality unless they've explicitly acknowledged it is equally homophobic? (says guy who is continually frustrated that no one seems to recognize i'm gay even tho i make no effort to hide it)

what signs are there outside the subject (by which i mean target) explicitly saying what they are that aren't based on stereotyping and gossip?

I also feel like the idea that it's "offensive" requires an assumption that it's "offensive" for a straight person to have to deal with speculation that they're gay,

nah it's just offensive that anyone would have to deal with anyone else speculating what they are period